One of the more recent, unexpected, and ironically exciting trends in indie rock has been the embrace of music that, objectively speaking, is intentionally predictable. There are remnants in the recent work of (Sandy) Alex G and Girlpool, and it’s the foundation of up-and-comers like Wild Pink, Hovvdy, Clique and Peaer—that of slowcore and its descriptively-named patron saints Duster and Low, with its rubbery tempos, small note clusters, and drowsy vocals. For some, it’s a daring aesthetic choice, testing and rewarding patience, going against assumptions of modern listening habits. For others, it’s an excuse to avoid hooks and clarity. The latter is certainly not the case with Us and Us Only on their Topshelf debut Full Flower. For the Baltimore band, slowcore not just a variant of indie rock, but also a framework for real-deal pop songs.
They also have a rare sense of humor about themselves in this realm, or at least a self-awareness. Their most recent EP was named Bored Crusader and if you zoom out far enough, Full Flower could be heard as his continuing adventures, a concept record about sleepwalking or even a commissioned soundtrack for an imaginary 44-minute film of someone under the covers, deciding whether or not to stop hitting the snooze button. “I wanna go back to bed,” Kinsey Matthews sings rather convincingly, three times within the two minutes of opener “sun4u” and the next two tracks offer advice of how to handle boredom—and these are the catchiest here.
“Kno” shows how insistent this style of music can be in spite of its soft touch, its repetitive twinkles as enveloping as shoegaze, but crisp and refreshing as a cold drink of water. It’s all in Matthews’ voice, an unusually piquant, lemony tone that cuts through its surroundings even when it doesn’t grip a melody all that tight. Though he barely reaches above a whisper—save for a startling scream at the end of “Lawn”—Us and Us Only are a band of five people playing in neatly manicured spaces, which makes unexpected production choices or stylistic shifts feel more profound.
For a few minutes in the middle of Full Flower, Us and Us Only reveal an unexpected freak-folk tenderness, as the string-swathed piano and acoustic guitar interludes "Veiled/Forming" and “way2loud” could pass for Devendra Banhart sketches. Meanwhile, “My Mouth” emerges from its murk with a slow-burning sensuality and limber groove more reminiscent of Wild Beasts than any of their DIY peers.
Though their work ethic and principles put them within that DIY realm, Us and Us Only’s sonic operating principles are slippery. Full Flower is technically their first album, but they’ve been knocking around since 2009, releasing four EPs that veered from sample-based experimentation to the doomier variation of slowcore that marks the album’s more conservative second half. After the lulling balladry of “way2loud,” the title track and “Lawn” move towards emo tempo shifts, soaring guitar leads, and distorted aggression. They are perfectly fine indie rock songs, yet a curious regression when Full Flower is more compelling and successful trying to be a “sleeper hit” in as accurate of terms as possible.
